Blasphemy case against Christian girl dropped

The 14-year-old Christian girl jailed in Pakistan on a cleric's allegation of blasphemy has been acquitted by a court.

In August, Rimsha Masih was accused by cleric Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti of burning papers, including pages torn from a child's Koran study book, in breach of Pakistan's strict, and fervently-enforced, blasphemy law.

Rimsha, who is intellectually disabled and reportedly with a mental age of 11, was whisked from her house by police, and jailed in Islamabad, after an angry mob surrounded her house and threatened to burn it down.

A week later, it emerged Chishti had set up Rimsha in an attempt to drive Christians from her slum neighbourhood on Islamabad's outskirts. Police said he had planted the burnt pages in a bag of rubbish she was carrying.

On Tuesday, the Islamabad High Court dismissed the complaint lodged against her.